310 APPENDIX. 



by wading bare-legged into the water, or by hand-picking. To distin- 

 guish it from the horse-leech it was called the Lough leech*. 



There is an old woman (Mrs. Darling, midwife) still living in the 

 village of Chirnside, who in former years — from 1808 till about 1825 

 — used regularly to collect the medical leech in a small lakelet at 

 Whitehall in this parish. That piece of water was drained away 

 about thirty years since. Boys say, that should the horse-leech fix 

 upon any part of the body, it will not lose its hold till it suck the 

 person to death : a few years ago a woman from Reston brought me 

 about a score of large horse-leeches in a bottle ; she had collected 

 them in a ditch near that village, and supposed them to be the 

 genuine "medical leeches." 



The leech sucks the blood willingly of all vertebrated animals that 

 come within its reach. To enable it to do this the body is first 

 firmly attached to the victim by the anal sucker, and the mouth 

 then applied to a spot selected for its evenness, or for being free of 

 hair in quadrupeds. Frogs, asks, and fish are, however, a more 

 common prey. The skin is cut through by the three serrated jaws 

 which arm the mouth, applied firmly ; and hence the wound is tri- 

 angular, or rather triradiate, the little incisions converging to a 

 centre f. Suction by the cupped mouth draws forth the blood 

 readily ; and the animal will not voluntarily leave its hold until it 

 has gorged itself, and the body has become distended to more than 

 twice its previous size. It then drops off satiated, and prepared for 

 a long fast ; how long, has not certainly been ascertained. Leeches 

 have been kept for several months — nay for years — in vessels con- 

 taining water only, and they do not seem to suffer from the want of 

 food. They lie in the vessels sometimes submerged, and often an 

 inch or two above the surface ; and sometimes they are seen to move 

 about restlessly, and swim through the water in the manner of eels. 

 These positions and motions it has been long the fashion to ascribe 

 to atmospherical changes ; and hence it has been proposed that 

 leeches should be kept in glass vases and substituted for our barome- 

 ters. Cowper declares that leeches, " in point of the earliest intelli- 

 gence, are worth all the barometers in the world ;" and the eccentric 

 Dr. J. Forster informs us that ** Leeches confined in a glass of water, 

 by their motions foretell rain and wind, before which they seem 

 much agitated, particularly before thunder and lightning." — Poc/c. 



* " whicli wavered about, for all the world like a gigantic Lock-leech, 



held by the tail between the finger and thumb, while it was poking its vast snout 

 about in the clouds in search of a spot to fasten on." — Tom Cringle's Log, ch. 2. 



t " Si la sangsue veut y sucer le sang, elle avance toute la masse buccale, eu 

 evase les levres interieures, erige et redresse les trois tubercules dentiferes qui 

 portent les crochets, en les endurcissant par une forte contraction de tout leur 

 tissu musculaire. Par les alternatives ou legeres intermittences de cette contrac- 

 tion des trois tubercules, ce qui produit la douleur quelquefois assez vive de la 

 morsure des sangsues, il resulte une action combinee de pression et de frottement 

 du bord garni de crochets, a la maniere d'une roue dentee, et par suite une petite 

 plaie qui, traversant I'epiderme, arrive jusqu'au reseau vasculaire et peut-etre au- 

 dela, d'ou la sortie du sang par la rupture des petits vaisseaux." — Blainville. See 

 also Jones's Anim. Kingd. p. 192-3, where the general reader will find a popular 

 account of the anatomv of the leech. 



